Random musings on all things Asian and not-so-Asian: mundane and philosophical, hypothetical and theoretical, way up there and down-to-earth.

Thursday, May 05, 2005

MICHAEL KEATON AS THE DARK KNIGHT MAY VERY WELL HAVE BEEN ON TO SOMETHING, GIVEN THAT OUR FUTURE SELVES UNDERSTAND THE CONFUSION WE CONTINUALLY FEEL

Everything around me and within me has suddenly taken on a heightened clarity, as if the normal sunshine, the usual heat, my everday thoughts, have become fuller and stranger and equipped with their own special form of almost supernatural logic and grace. Perhaps it's because I feel change in the air, almost literally, as the heat gets stronger, more confident, and the dark clouds continue to tantalizingly hint at rain. Or it may because so much is changing (possibly), and stability is fragile (potentially). Where I will be two months from now is not altogether clear: possibly here, perhaps there. Where I will go is open.

It's that openness that is scary, isn't it? Frightening and necessary, somehow -- at least for me, and maybe sometimes for you, too. When things are open you can go any which way but loose, to quote an old Clint Eastwood movie. You can drift somewhere and come ashore on a strange or familiar beach, depending on the wind.

Or maybe it's like that scene in the original BATMAN flick, where Michael Keaton is trying to find the words to explain to Kim Basinger that he is, in fact, the Dark Knight.

"You know how other people have jobs, and they get up in the morning and brush their tooth and come downstairs and have something to eat and kiss somebody goodbye," he says, realizing that words are failing him. He's trying to describe what a normal life is compared to his abnormal one.

Sometimes I feel that way. (And sometimes you do, too, I'm sure.) Even if you DO have a life that includes getting up and coming downstairs and grabbing something to eat and kissing somebody goodbye before you carpool to work, there is always a nagging feeling within us that wants to go another octave beyond a nag and into a roar. The source and content of its ferocious message isn't always clear, but I have my suspicions.

Assuming that life is not a random series of unfortunate events (and that's a big assumption), then perhaps not only the 'me' of now is the captain of my ship but the 'me' of later, too. The 'me' who is forty, fifty, even sixty could be calling the shots. Incarnations of my later self (selves?) could be sending back through time appropriate psychic messages that help me make the big decisions, the tough decisions.

Or perhaps these later selves of mine also have some sway in the temporal and logistic shifting of reality itself; perhaps they are nudging people this way and that way, making room for me, allowing me to find the path that is meant for me and me alone. (These later selves know how hard it is, because they, of course, went through the same experiences.)

In other words, our lives are a loop -- the past selves inform our present selves, we know that, Dr.Phil told us so, and so who's to say that our future selves can't exist in a parallel dimension of time and space? Who's to say that our future isn't as prominent and potent as our present? If time is an illusion, a concept I suspect and endorse as being true, then it makes sense that the loop of life will be bookended by our later selves, who, of course, will want to make our rides as comfortable as possible.

So:

The stability of life and the constant things in life are constantly being upended. Check. Got that. But this is all part of a larger process, a cyclical process, whereby who we are decades hence somehow cosmically influences who we are at the present moment in time. The heat and the wind and the feelings in my gut are mysteriously coded signals, all of them, from future versions of Scott, hopefully wiser versions of Scott.

I'm down with that.

Such notions, bizarre as they seem, may not seem credible, no, but they allow the morning sun, the drifting clouds, the instincts we dismiss and discard to have a rhythm and a pattern and a balance that approach something almost musical in their serenity and intent.